Firefly – Chapter 23
By: Suz Mc
What Sam had in his hand was going to set Dean off into a Hiroshima level rage. When he turned to go back into the motel room, he caught sight of Dean standing over Emily's suitcase. The top was flapped open and he was filling it with her coloring books, her Disney Princess blanket, and the picture Sam had given her days earlier. The last item to be added was Cinderella Barbie. For a few seconds, Dean hesitated, holding the doll in both hands and looking at it as if it actually was Emily, held safe in his hands.
The only way to get a handle on the unshielded, unprotected Dean was to study him when he wasn't looking. Sam had learned that from years of covert surveillance on his brother, and it was the only way to dig through the layers of bravado and bullshit. Right now, it felt like being a peeping tom catching someone naked and stripped of his defenses. If it wasn't so completely heartbreaking, the sight of his brother with a frilly plastic princess would have been funny. Dean's hands held weapons and beer bottles and way too friendly bar chicks, not dolls and not little girls. Until now.
Dean was barely holding it together at this point and if they found that little girl dead, he'd let go altogether. It wasn't fatalism, it was fact. Dean let go of the doll and let it bounce gently into the pink suitcase that held everything that was Emily. As the doll settled, Dean wobbled a bit and had to steady himself with both hands gripping the tiny square bag.
"Hey," Sam said, startling Dean as he struggled to camouflage his dizziness. "Give me the keys. I'm driving."
"Hell no, you're not." Dean zipped the suitcase shut and tucked it under his arm. He drew in a few deep breaths, a forced rigidness taking over his posture.
"You got rouphied, Dean, and unless you think running us into a ditch is going to help get us where we're going, you shouldn't drive."
Dean hesitated, fighting against his control issues, before he pulled the keys from his pocket and handed them over. He slapped them into Sam's palm, none too gently.
"Wait." Sam reached out to stop Dean's progress toward the door. Opening his other hand, Sam dangled a magnetic mount with a transmitter. "This is how they tracked you."
Dean snatched the device out of his hand, anger forcing a rush of red into his pale face.
"Where was it?" Dean was focusing all of his frustration on the disk the size of a fingernail.
"Bumper. "
"That's why I got that ass-kissin' apology from Drake. It was so one of his buddies could put this on my car." Dean closed his fist around the transmitter and began to prowl the room. "I've killed fuckin' vampires and werewolves and goddamn demons but I couldn't keep a bunch of piss poor humans from taking my kid!" He slammed the metal and wire down to the floor and stomped it into useless debris on the carpet.
"Dean."
"No, Sam!" Dean shouted back at his brother, venting his fear and failure. "Calley, non-hunter, five foot two Calley, stopped a demon from taking Emily, but I let these suck ass human beings get her!" He ground his foot into the carpet, growling out his anger once again.
There wasn't any way to soothe Dean's rage at this point, or to make any of this better so Sam wasn't even going to try. The only way to make this better was to undo it.
"Let's go," Sam said, heading toward the door. He could hear Dean's heavy footsteps behind him and felt the slam of a ruined motel room door. Dean needed silence to pull himself together and he had to give it to him. To get this done, his brother was going to have to be pure, one hundred percent Dean Winchester, not just some terrified father out of his mind with worry about his missing child. He had to be sharp and he was going to have to be brutal, they both were. Talk was going to take away from Dean's ability to yank those harder pieces of himself closed over that other guy who was scared to death he couldn't save Emily.
Sam slid behind the wheel and looked away as Dean carefully placed Emily's suitcase in the backseat where she should be sitting.
*****
As long as she pretended to be asleep, the mean grownups were leaving her alone. The seat was small and if she didn't keep her legs pulled in tight, she would feel her feet touch the man on the other side and she didn't want to touch him or be close to him at all. When she'd decided to close her eyes, the lady who'd hurt her had made them stop and got into the front seat. That was good. That lady was super mean and had squeezed her arm and made it hurt again just like that Lindsey lady and she didn't want to touch that lady either. It made her stomach hurt.
The car was hot and that ugly book Lindsey had kept in her car was on the floor of this car, too. When the mean lady had hurt her arm, she'd fallen on the floor on top of it and it had buzzed in her leg. It felt like the buzz when new Uncle Sammy had held her hand, but not nice like that. It was a scary, scratchy feeling and she wasn't going to touch that again.
Where was Daddy? They were walking and then she felt funny and then she was here with these bad people. When they talked, it sounded ugly, like they weren't nice at all. They laughed at mean things. They were talking about some lady they'd put in the trunk of a car somewhere and laughing about shaking her teeth out on bumpy roads. Before Mama went to heaven, they were never around people like that. Now, everybody was mean like that. But not Daddy or Ellen or Uncle Sammy or Jake. They were all new but they were nice. They didn't let people be mean or talk mean at her.
Daddy was new at knowing about little girls. That's what he said when he was trying to do the bubble bath right and poured it all in the tub. It was fun. Mama never did all the bubbles at once and it piled over the bathtub onto the floor and she wanted to laugh but no sounds would come out. Her sound maker was broken and it better stay that way or Lindsey was going to come burn her new Daddy up like what happened to Mama. He said he was sorry if he didn't do it right when he was washing her hair but it was okay. It was funny to see him with all the bubbles on his shirt and he laughed so she didn't feel so bad that she couldn't. When she got scared at night and those awful dreams kept coming, he was there to hold her and they went away. He was really big but he talked sweet, like Mama did, and it felt better when he was there. He got scared sometimes, too, and she heard him yell like he was having a bad dream but he felt better when she came in his room and checked on him like he did on her. Somebody hurt his arm like they did her arm and she wondered if it was that same lady with the black eyes.
She wanted Daddy to come get her out of this hot car and take her away from the scary people. He was going to be really mad at that lady and make that lady. Maybe he was close by and if they stoppe, he'd be there. If she kept her eyes shut tight and kept really still, they would leave her alone until Daddy came to find her.
The car stopped moving and she almost fell off but she kept still on the seat.
"Pump the gas, I'll pay."
It was the lady's voice and she slammed the door hard. The seat moved beside her and she felt the mean red headed man's leg press against her shoe.
"I'm going to pee." He leaned over and she felt his breath and she wanted to cry, but she kept still like she was asleep. "She's still out." The door slammed shut and the little breeze felt cool but it didn't last.
One more door opened and shut and she was all by herself. They were gone and it was nice that they were gone. The last mean man was outside and she heard noises like when Mama put gas in her little red car. Now she could open her eyes and she slid over to the side of the car away from the man putting in the gas. When she looked out the window, she didn't recognize anything. They weren't anywhere she knew, but then she saw the back of a man on the other side of the big parking lot. It was him! It was Daddy! She couldn't see his face, but his hair looked like Daddy and he had on the black t-shirt he was wearing that got the bubbles on it and boots and blue jeans with holes. She pushed the door lock thingie and shoved the door open. Daddy was walking away to the other side and the black car must be there somewhere. She ran hard and she could feel the hot pavement. Daddy had a bag in his hand and he liked cheeseburgers so there must be one in that bag. She ran harder and she got close to him and grabbed his leg so he'd stop and pick her up and they'd get away from those mean people.
"Hey, there." His leg stopped walking and he had his hand on her head and it was going to be okay. She kept her eyes shut because she just wanted him to pick her up and get her away from those mean people and she didn't want to see them again.
"What's wrong, pretty girl? Are you lost?"
She opened her eyes because it wasn't Daddy's voice and he was down in front of her and it wasn't Daddy's face either and she started to cry.
"Emily!"
It was the lady yelling and she jumped at the sound because Daddy wasn't there and the lady was running toward her. She threw her arms around the man who wasn't Daddy, hoping he wouldn't let the lady get her.
"It's okay, sweetie. " The man was nice. Maybe he would fix it.
"Emily, precious, it's okay." The lady's voice was different now. She was talking sweet, but she wasn't. The mean lady's hands were sweaty and she wrapped them around her waist and tugged at her and she held tighter to the man.
"Thank you so much for stopping her, Sir." The lady was dragging her away and she pulled on her hurt arm and she couldn't hold on to the man's neck.
"Uh, is there a problem? She seems really scared." The man wasn't letting go. He knew this was a mean lady and she was a big fat liar! He was smart, like Daddy.
"Yes, I'm afraid there is. This poor little girl was kidnapped from Texas and we're taking her back home." The lady jerked her hard and pulled her away from the man who wasn't Daddy. "She's been terribly traumatized. Come on, sweetie."
She started kicking and twisting, hoping she could get away. The man in the black t-shirt didn't believe the mean lady and he was following them.
"Hey, wait a minute! Are you cops or something? Let me see some ID!"
It didn't matter how hard she fought to get away, the lady was holding on too tight. They were already at the car when the nice man caught up to them. The red haired monster man was there and he pulled the door open and they threw her inside the car and it hurt so bad. The lady got in and slammed the door and her face was red hot mad. The woman reached over to grab her arm but she pushed over to the other door as far as she could to be out of reach.
"You're gonna be sorry, you little bitch!"
The nice man who looked like Daddy was punching numbers into his cell phone and saying that he was calling the cops. When he pulled the phone up to his ear, the mean red-haired man pulled out something long and shiny and stuck it into his stomach. He yanked it sideways and blood ran out all over the man's shirt. He didn't yell or scream like it hurt, just looked scared and fell down on the ground.
The air got really, really hot and everything looked like it was spinning around and then it was dark again.
***
Dean hated riding shotgun with a passion, unless he was sleeping. Riding like a wounded passenger in his own car pissed him off even more and added to the pounding in his head. At least when he was driving, he could focus on the road, on the signs, on the speed, and not on what was happening to Emily. Even with his eyes wide open watching the landscape go by, there was a morbid video playing in his mind. Those people were willing to slit a child's throat. What else were they willing to do to pass the time with her?
"How long are you going make me ride in the bitch seat?" Dean shifted hard in the seat, not knowing what to do with his foot when it wasn't on the gas."
"It's been an hour," Sam said, not taking his eyes off the road. "You think you're clean?"
"Yes, damnit."
Sam gave one of those heavy sighs that pissed Dean off no end. "We need to fill up so when we stop you can take over, okay?"
He reached over the seat and pulled out Sam's translation notes. The only explanations Dean had of Emily's impending fate had come filtered through his brother and he wanted it firsthand.
"Are you sure you want to read those?"
"No, but I have to."
Another long sigh from the driver's seat.
"Maybe there's something in here that will give us an edge." Dean flattened the pages filled with Sam's long hand scrawl out across his lap. "Are you positive you got the translation right?"
"Do you think I'd make a mistake with something this important?" Sam's grip tightened on the wheel and Dean pulled back his attitude just a bit.
"No, I don't."
"I wish I was wrong."
"I know you do."
Dean began to digest the ancient horror of the words, trying to pretend that they were referring to some anonymous sacrifice without a name and not the little girl who liked pie and pretended she was taller than she was.
TBC